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Hillary Clinton gets covered up

Australian artist then has to remove image entirely after legal threats

Clinton Yates @clintonyates

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    7:00 AM

    The nature of street art is temporary, by design. You paint something on a wall. Eventually, someone paints over it. The time of its existence is part and parcel with the satisfaction of the experience of creating it and looking at it. So when a provocative piece goes up, there’s the chance that someone either complains or buffs it entirely. In the case of Lushsux, an Australian artist, both ended up happening.

    Earlier this week, a mural of Hillary Clinton in a bikini that was designed after an American flag made a lot of noise. On the surface, the so-called shock value was obvious. Of course, local government complained, so the artist made an adjustment. He covered her in a niqab. Smart, no? Makes a good point about how ridiculous not only censorship is, but particularly in the case of allowing women to be themselves. A provocative mural doubled down.

    Then, guess what? He had to cover it up altogether. The council deemed it sexist. According to the National Post, he answered back on social media. “This is no longer a wall of a supposed ‘offensive and near naked’ Hillary Clinton, it is now a depiction of a beautiful Muslim woman. No reasonable person would consider this offensive,” the artist wrote in a post.

    Alas.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.